I had the absolute pleasure of visiting the Casket Arts Building today. It's one of the renovated factories in NE Minneapolis that now houses artists' studios. I wasn't there to check out any available spaces today, although I would love to someday have a studio-office here. The shot above is of the common area on the second floor. I'm so head-over-heels in love with the light (here's the same space from a slightly different angle) that I would gladly take photos of the building all day long. For free.

Anyway, today I've got a bevy of answers for the more house-related (and general lifestyle) questions I got. There was quite a lot to talk about, so click the extended entry for the questions and answers.

I had a fun, social Saturday (gym! lunch! family! Raclette!), so I was looking forward to running a few errands today (Sunday) and thought I'd go see a movie. But then, around 10:00am, I decided I would take some stuff out of the kitchen closet in an effort to get started on overhauling that room. A couple hours later, I was suddenly painting the closet, having first exploded all its contents onto the kitchen counters. Whoops. So that project pretty much took the entire day.

The calf planter in the photo is a good example of the sort of thing that was tucked up high and way back in the closet (I suppose it's really a 'pantry', since it has shelves, but it's where I keep the garbage can, and combining 'pantry' and 'garbage' just grosses me out). The walls of the closet had gotten stained, so part of my kitchen plan was always to paint inside there (just not today).

Actually, the desire to paint the closet, aside from the practical aspect, was inspired by the dark blue bathroom in a Minneapolis coffee shop I visit every so often (Blue Moon). Every time I go in there, I'm struck with the urge to paint a room the same rich color, but I know I wouldn't actually enjoy it as much as I'm tempted to think I would. But a closet would be good! Buying a quart of paint would hardly have been a big expense, but I figured I had lots of leftover paint from various house projects, so I should just use that instead.

There was quite a bit of 'Morris Room' grey left (from the first time I painted the piano room), so I was going to go with that, but then I found a can of 'Meander Blue' that was three-quarters full. (Both colors are/were from Sherwin Williams.) I thought I'd almost run out of that when I painted the kitchen, but I guess I DID run out and had to buy a new gallon. So now the closet matches the rest of the kitchen and looks very smart. Tomorrow, I'm hoping to find some inexpensive but decent storage containers for the closet, as it tends to get messy quickly when things are loose on the shelves.

The hardest thing about getting everything clean and tidy is remembering not to mess it up again. Stashing things away in drawers or other hiding places is such a bad habit of mine. And now that the walls of the kitchen closet are freshly painted and looking good, I'm going to have to make an effort to not fling coffee grounds everywhere the whole time. Not that I do that. Ever.

Okay, I finally pulled myself up by my bootstraps and finished tidying up the bedroom. There are still a few things left to do, like buy new pillows (I'm willing to admit that my million-year-old pillows may be the cause of my night-time sinus problems), but at least everything is where it's supposed to be now.

I've always had a problem with getting my bedroom to look just right, mainly because the walls are (off) white. I think I've mentioned this before; white walls just look so unfinished to me (not, I should stress, in other, more Scandinavian people's homes). I decided to group the frames I had previously spread out on the walls, creating just a few focal points -- the grouped frames, the map, and the dresser mirror (above).

Sorry to anybody who was hoping to see the patchwork side of the finished quilt, but I'm actually using the 'back' as the top. When I was going through my vintage bedsheets to see if I had anything to back the quilt with, I spread this daffodil-print sheet on the bed and fell in love with it. It was only a full size, so it wasn't quite big enough for the queen-size quilt, but I cut it down to the same size as the patchwork on the other side (both sides have the white edges) and used the leftover to make binding strips.

I bought a sheet set on clearance at Target, because I needed a large amount of (nice) solid white fabric, and that was the cheapest/easiest way to get it. So I cut up the flat sheet, saved the fitted sheet (which I'll use once flannel sheet season has passed), and I was very pleased that the green 'cuffs' on the pillowcases perfectly matched the green of the daffodil print. I've had those yellow striped pillowcases for a couple years now; they were thrifted and are the softest, smoothest things ever.

I got rid of a lot of clothes (two big garbage bags of stuff for a garage sale later and one to actually throw away), but I still have too much. The white dresser has my jeans, exercise clothes, and undergarments; the small, stripey dresser has mostly summer clothes; there's a three-shelf unit in my little closet with t-shirts and sweaters.

I wish I could take a picture of my closet, but it's so small and oddly placed that it's impossible. Cleaning it out was the biggest project in the bedroom overhaul, because I had taken to chucking stuff in there and forgetting about it (which is what I do with any doored/hidden space, hence this whole house project). I decided to hang only the shirts that I wear on a regular basis (and some dresses), because I can more easily store less-often-worn shirts by folding them.

Anyway, I might do further weeding of clothes at a later date, because I do aspire to have only clothes that I really, really like. Even if that means not having much of a selection! But I think there are only so many decisions a person can make at once, and I definitely hit that limit!

Up next? The kitchen. Big (literally -- it's the biggest room in the house) and scary, although not as scary as the guest room currently is. (It's a nightmare. A nightmare! If I were any sort of decent human being, I would go in there right now and try to ameliorate the situation. Alas.)

So, when Alex and Ann and I were having lunch on Saturday, they were complimenting my house for looking so good. And I'm not saying this to brag, but it's something that often comes up when I'm out with friends and some of them have been to my home while others have not. 'Anna's house is so cute!' I love hearing that, of course; I definitely won't deny it. I take a lot of pride in how I keep my house, and I also just enjoy the process of decorating. But at the same time, I can't help thinking, 'What's the big deal?'

I took the picture above when I was at my parents' this afternoon/evening for the Vikings game (sad face). I think this might explain my confusion at the fuss people make -- if you have a home, of course you decorate it. My parents' style (I would say my mom's, as I feel like she makes most of the executive decorating decisions, but I know my dad has opinions, too) isn't terribly similar to my own, but I still appreciate the put-togetherness of it. And I see things like the stack of books on the coffee table, and I only have to move my eyeballs to see the same thing in my own living room. (Somebody needs to organize those bookcases by color, though!)

Decorating is definitely a first-world concern, but I don't think it's only for people with huge disposable incomes. I bought most of my furniture shortly after moving in, and I certainly wouldn't be able to afford to do so now, but the bulk of the changes I've made in the look of my house over the past couple of years have been pretty cheap -- nothing much more expensive than a gallon of paint, say. I don't buy designer anything; I buy what I can afford and like, and then I work with it.

I feel like people who drool while reading design blogs while making no attempt to work with what they've got (or what they could get for cheap at the thrift store) are a lot like people who wish they could cook but never bother spending time in the kitchen. You have to learn what you like by trying things out, and I guess my point is that I had a leg-up in the whole process by growing up in houses where aesthetics were a consideration. Putting effort into having a nice home is just something I take for granted. How about you?

I spent a lot of time at home this week (or, rather, left the house even less than usual), so when it came time to get ready for a Friday-evening dinner gathering, I almost wished I could back out -- inertia. Luckily, I didn't (I'm not crazy, after all), and I had a really nice time with smart and funny people. And I got to make the rhubarb crisp pictured above. I had the rhubarb in the freezer (I can't remember if it was from the garden or the farmer's market), so I just used the really simple recipe from the old Betty Crocker cookbook (I wrote it down here). A winner.

And then, today, I had lunch with my friend Alex and new friend (I hope!) Ann, who came from the internet. Or somewhere around the Mall of America, but that's not really as funny. We met at the Seward Cafe, because that's one of my favorite places to eat, and I'm also a little bit bossy. (I am a little bit bossy, but actually I just have a shortlist of places I like to eat and will always suggest, in order to avoid the whole 'I don't know, what do YOU think' rigmarole.)

I had a buckwheat pancake with some 'deluxe' on top (plain yogurt and sliced fruit), and it was so good that I will show you this picture of it, even though it's a terrible photo. Alex commented that the pancake looked like something I would make at home, except I would have cut the slices of fruit more thinly and arranged then more carefully (I also would have alternated the fruits instead of grouping them). I am predictable.

You can see Alex's miso soup in the background, along with the tahini toast I said she should get (as a helpful suggestion, not in a... bossy way). Ann got Mexicali eggs, and everybody enjoyed their food and we sat and chatted and had a good time. Meeting new (awesome) people might be my current favorite past-time. It was particularly handy that Ann's been reading twelve22 for a while, so she sort of knew ahead of time what to expect (maybe? I might make her fill out a survey to find out how my projected blog persona compares to my actual self. I mean, I might ask her.) -- but meeting people in real life gives one the opportunity to tell the same (interesting! funny!) stories that one's friends have already heard repeatedly.

Anyway, it was good for my brain to have some social time the past two days (although I did have a really nice week, despite its relative solitude). I thought I'd be able to post pictures of my bedroom by this weekend, but I still haven't bound the quilt, because I get bored just thinking of hand stitching the binding. But perhaps I will bring that to my parents' tomorrow and finish it while we watch the Viking's game.

We were talking about my house at lunch today, and I said that I've been having 'nightmares' this past week about people coming over to visit. The house is so far from its norm, due to this whole overhaul process, and I haven't bothered to take my mop bucket downstairs (it's in the bathroom), because I keep meaning to try out the new floor polish I got (fancy!). See, I can't clean, because I have to clean first. Here's another item for my list of 'Things That Wouldn't Have Occurred If I Weren't a Home-Owner': dreaming that I'm wearing ice skates in the house and thinking, 'Oh, this can't be good for the hard wood floors!'

Hello! I was just thinking I was about ready to settle into bed to read for a while (Richard Dawkin's The Greatest Show on Earth), and then I realized I hadn't done a post for today. And I had the photo and everything, so... okay.

The picture is of my lunch. I made Seitan Chorizo Crumbles the other day, and I think this is my favorite way to eat them -- with scrambled egg whites and a tortilla. Vital wheat gluten is amazing stuff. I still can never quite believe that it's possible to mix it with just a few other ingredients, and it becomes something delicious. I've never had real chorizo, but the fake version is definitely a good thing.

After assembling my new closet shelf yesterday, things started to fall into place with the Great Bedroom Reorganization of 2010. The clothes situation is taken care of now, and that was the big project for the room. I find it absolutely boggling that I -- a person who would definitely not be considered a clothes horse -- have so many clothes. I'll have to do a post about the bedroom once I've finished, and I'll explain how I've organized things, but I'll say right now that it seems as though there are entirely too many drawers and shelves of clothes for one person.

I think that once I've finished with my bedroom (which will still be a little while yet), I'll move on to the kitchen. I'm leaving the guest bedroom for last, as it's currently the catch-all room and is a disaster. And I'll tackle the basement in the summer, when it's more pleasant to be down there.

Well, I'm journeying up to Sandstone tomorrow to watch the football game (on TV, with my parents), so I hope you'll all have a nice rest of the weekend. And if you have Monday off, enjoy it!

Well, I did it -- I finished sorting out the piano room this week. I chose it as a starting point because it seemed pretty straight-forward. Basically, the more storage a room has, the more of a hidden nightmare it is for me. And the piano room only has a closet and the cabinet (above), so I figured it couldn't be too bad. It wasn't, really, but it certainly did take some time.

My goal with the house overhaul is to feel, at the end, like I don't have extra clutter. Nothing stashed away to be dealt with later. I'm trying not to hold onto things just for the 'what if' factor (and... mostly succeeding). The piano room ('hall') closet was a good example of this -- previously, if something fit in there, I figured I might as well hang on to it.

No longer! I weeded out a few coats I'll never wear again, along with several cardigans. I went through some papers and marveled at the fact that I had deemed the show-floor tag from my coffee table worth hanging on to (more like it was easier to stash it than throw it). Stuff like that. And now I can actually see the floor of my hall closet, AND the door shuts. It's never latched (it's an old door), and the overflow of coats used to keep it propped open a few inches. Now that it's cleared out and I've got a shoe hanger on the back of the door (with hooks over the top of it), I can neatly wedge the door shut. I keep finding myself surprised by its shut-ness when I walk by.

The rest of the room didn't need much work. I bought some LP frames with birthday money and framed a few sleeves from Elvis Costello albums. Those are over the piano now, and I think they go nicely with the print I bought at the Gutenberg museum in Mainz. The only other piece of art on the walls is the letter-pressed sign I got at my very first Frankfurt Book Fair.

The rest of the (limited) wall space (it's a small room) is taken up by my bookcases. I originally bought that smaller case, the one under the window, intending to paint it white, for the cookbooks in the kitchen. Wait, no! I bought it for the piano room, but I didn't like it with the previous set up, so it just wound up in the kitchen. I was going to paint it white after that, though, but I'm glad I didn't, because it's back in the piano room, after all. It doesn't really go with the other furniture, but it does do the job of housing the rest of my books; there are hardly any now that aren't in the piano room (like... only a few dozen, plus all my cookbooks).

Oh, the little white bench to the right of the cabinet in the top photo? That's the cats' bathroom water plinth. I put it there months and months ago, when Booty had some stomach bug and was hanging out in the bathroom a lot (because it's a dark and cool room). I don't keep water in it all the time, but I occasionally fill it with tap water from the bathroom sink, and you'd think it was a hundred times better than the tap water I put in their usual water bowl (in the kitchen). I think it's just the novelty. If one cat hears the other drinking from the bathroom water bowl, she (or he) has to come running to get some for her- or himself. Cats, eh?

Anyway, my bedroom is this week's project. I'm willing to admit it might take longer than a week, although I did start going through my dresser a while ago. I'm going to try to be fairly merciless -- any clothing I don't love has to go. Eep.

I slept a bit later than usual this morning, so it was almost ten by the time I finished eating breakfast. That was the only reason I had this bowl of Jumbo Rice Krispies, since they keep a person (me) full for only about an hour. They're sort of amazing, though. The flavor reminds me of Rice Krispie Treats cereal, which was my favorite sugar cereal before I became a vegetarian.

Anyway, today was a very errand-y day, including getting some responsible bank-business out of the way, picking up yet more groceries I forgot to get on my last two trips (and I still managed to forget something else!), and finally tackling my hall closet. It's really the piano room closet, but it's where I keep jackets, so that makes it more hall-y.

It's not a wide closet, but it's deep (the most impractical sort of storage), and I started by taking everything out. It was a disaster, and you can't even see everything in that photo. There was a huge pile of jackets and sweatshirts on the piano and a big box of Christmas stuff (which had been un-boxed before) off to the right. To be fair, though, the vacuum and the mop bucket were never in the closet.

I found lots of things I had forgotten I owned (slippers!) and a box of photos I hadn't seen in a while. Among the photos were ones I took right after I started using an SLR for the first time, and I really wasted a lot of film on bad photographs. I mean, not wasted, since it was part of the learning process, etc, etc. But, yeah -- a lot of wasted film.

There were also shots of my college friends and I; there's one in particular, of my friend literally rolling on the floor with laughter, which made me quite nostalgic. I remember telling myself, probably during my senior year of college, to enjoy the fact that all (most) of my friends lived within a mile radius of each other, because that would never be true again. I was so wise. And so not a good photographer.

I also made a bag of jackets and sweaters that I'm never going to wear again. And a pile of various odds and ends that I don't want. My plan for this big house decluttering is to create a garage sale's worth of stuff for this summer. Planning ahead. Because I apparently need this much lead time, since all of last summer whooshed by before I could get my act together and sort stuff out.

There's still a lot to rehome from what I pulled out of the closet, but it's not too bad. I boxed up all the Christmas decorations and related paraphernalia and brought that down to the basement, which freed up a lot of room. It's actually so organized and tidy in the closet now that I've instantly forgotten what used to live in there. I have to keep peeking in when I walk by, because I'm so pleased with how it looks.

I'll finish organizing the cabinet in the piano room tomorrow (really just sort out the drawer), because I said I'd be finished with that room this week. The scary part is that it really did take all week (or will have, once I'm done), and I chose the piano room to start with because it was supposed to be the easiest! Gulp.